Really, Anderson Cooper, if you’re going to go full “don’t sugarcoat it,” why don’t you have the power to ban Jeffrey Lord from your show?

The news has come fast this Friday night, and Anderson Cooper 360 was discussing that Trump called the FBI Director Comey a “nut job” and saying he fired Comey to relieve pressure on the Russia investigation (obstruction of justice).

Of course, Jeffrey Lord defended Trump because that’s what Jeff Zucker hired Jeffrey Lord to do on CNN.

But apparently, it’s Anderson Cooper’s job to get viral clips of his show on social media, because he said this.
“If he took a dump on his desk, you would defend it. I don’t know what he would do that you would not defend. I mean you’re a loyal guy, I think that speaks well of you.”

Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King appeared on CNN this morning with Brooke Baldwin and pushed back strongly against the idea put forth by Rep. Sean Duffy that the Senate Intelligence committee is some kind of “witch hunt.”

“Knowing what the president said, calling the Russian investigation a witch hunt, telling anchors he believes it will hurt the country. How do you see it?” she asked.

King took visible umbrage.

“Well, you got to back up and say, you know, how did we get here?” he said.

“We had an democracy by a foreign government that was sophisticated, directed from the very top, that reached all the way from state registration, voter registration rolls through hacking, releasing of documents, people purposely planting false stories in the news.

“This was an attack on our democracy and that’s the reality,” he said. “And we’ve got to look into it. You can call it a witch hunt, I call it my duty. I didn’t go to congress to be reading intelligence cables and poring over history of who talked to who when, but we can’t turn a blind eye to what happened, and we’ve got to get to the bottom of the facts.

“And I think that’s what this is all about. it’s not a witch hunt,” he said. “I can tell you right now i am not going to participate in a witch hunt, and if the facts demonstrate what President Trump said, that there was no collusion, no interaction between his campaign and the Russians during the period of the summer of 2016, I’ll sign the report.

“But right now we don’t know that, and we have a duty to dig into it.”

After O’Rielly passed, the statement read, one of the guards asked why Donnelly hadn’t brought up his questions while the commissioner was at the podium. The guard then made him leave the building “under implied threat of force,” the statement read.

John M. Donnelly says he was trying to talk to O’Rielly after the news conference, which is standard practice for journalists.

O’Rielly saw what was happening, but walked past, Donnelly said.

Donnelly, who heads the Press Freedom Team at the National Press Club, said guards treated him like a criminal.

O’Rielly says he didn’t see him:

@johnmdonnelly@FCC@AjitPaiFCC John, I saw security put themselves between you, me and my staff. I didn't see anyone put a hand on you. I'm sorry his occurred.

Deregulation of polluters and tax cuts for billionaires. And that’s it.

So now that Trump is in serious trouble and there’s a special counsel to prove it, who comes to the rescue of the Republican Agenda but the Koch Brothers? The video above shows Elizabeth MacDonald telling her fellow Outnumbered hosts that the Koch brothers are going to dump $400 million into an ad campaign pushing for tax “reform.”

“Reform” is Republican for Tax Cuts for Billionaires. USA Today:

In a major jolt of support for President Trump, the powerful political network overseen by conservative billionaire Charles Koch is launching a multimillion-dollar campaign to drive Trump’s tax plan through Congress.

The group plans to throw “the full weight of the network” behind the campaign with the goal of passing a tax overhaul this year, said James Davis, a top official in Koch’s Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce. Davis would not disclose a specific dollar amount but said the effort would include advertising and mobilizing grassroots activists.

Although Koch opposes Trump’s travel bans and questions the president’s skepticism of free-trade policies, the head of one the country’s largest industrial conglomerates has praised Trump for several actions since taking office, including his move to dismantle “unnecessary” federal regulations.

They have just reported that according to their sources, the investigation into Russian collusion has identified a current White House official as “a significant person of interest,” thus expanding the probe into the highest levels of government.

The person under scrutiny is someone close to the president, according to the sources, who would not identify the official.

Investigators are apparently shifting from work that has remained under the radar to conducting interviews and using a grand jury to issue subpoenas. The Post sources say the intensity of the probe is “expected to accelerate” in the coming weeks.

The sources emphasized that investigators remain keenly interested in people who previously wielded influence in the Trump campaign and administration but are no longer part of it, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

We really need to point out at the beginning that Steve Mnuchin is a lying piece of billionaire trash who would cut off his own mother’s nursing home bills if it would earn him a tax cut. He’s already arguing for “quantitative easing,” i.e. voodoo economics, to generate the talking point that massive tax cuts for the rich “pay for themselves.” Yeah, he’s that kind of liar.

So when he goes up against Senator Elizabeth Warren to tell her yes, sure, he wants a “Glass-Stegall for the 21st Century” only it shouldn’t do one damn thing that the original Glass-Stegall did, i.e. separate mortgage banking from Wall Street banking, Elizabeth Warren takes out her rolling pin and softens up that butter like a pro:

In what may be a first for the network, Fox News fired Bob Beckel this morning for a “racially-insensitive” remark made in the workplace.

Fox News is, of course, being sued by a group of African-American employees for racial bias and discrimination and general workplace racism. So Beckel isn’t the first person to make racially insensitive remarks at the network, just the first to be fired for it.

Fox News’ human-resources department was made aware of a complaint about what one person familiar with the situation characterized as a “racially insensitive remark” on Tuesday evening. Executives conducted an internal investigation, this person said, and decided to part ways with Beckel Friday morning.

After four months of interactions between Mr. Trump and his counterparts, foreign officials and their Washington consultants say certain rules have emerged: Keep it short — no 30-minute monologue for a 30-second attention span. Do not assume he knows the history of the country or its major points of contention. Compliment him on his Electoral College victory. Contrast him favorably with President Barack Obama. Do not get hung up on whatever was said during the campaign. Stay in regular touch. Do not go in with a shopping list but bring some sort of deal he can call a victory.

“Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States, is either a sucker and a dupe for Donald Trump…”

So said Joe Scarborough this morning on MSNBC.

I think he might be both.

For the most part, the media has kept discussions about Mike Penceto a minimum, but he’s been contradicted by Trump on so many occasions including the Gen. Flynn and the James Comey firing, that it’s getting painful

At the top of the hour, Scarborough and his panel discussed Trump’s inconsistent and ever changing stories, including admiring and then attacking the special counsel, calling it “the greatest witch hunt in history.”

Scarborough said, “They have two or there story lines going and they’re just not consistent with each other.”

Willie Geist said Pence’s people are saying Pence has been left in the dark on most of Trump’s decisions? Are we are seeing a rift between Trump and his vice president?

Scarborough turned to Bob Woodward and said, “Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States, is either a sucker and a dupe for Donald Trump is being set up that way to go out and lie and lie and lie again, or he’s a liar.”